Bhutan's Royal Exit: Sovereign Fund Dumps $72M in BTC, Leaving Miners Holding the Bag

The Kingdom of Bhutan just pulled off a royal rug pull, shuffling 973 bitcoin—worth a princely $72.32 million—across Tuesday and Wednesday. The on-chain paparazzi at Arkham Intelligence caught the entire palace exodus in high definition.

By Wednesday, the Himalayan kingdom had shipped another $44.44 million in BTC to a pair of mystery addresses, bringing the 24-hour fire sale total to a cool $72.3 million. Every satoshi traveled from wallets belonging to Druk Holding & Investments, the nation's sovereign wealth fund that apparently moonlights as its official bitcoin bag-holder.

In one particularly juicy transaction, 20.5 BTC (about $1.52 million) was routed directly to the over-the-counter desk QCP Capital. When you stack this with earlier moves tracked by Arkham, Bhutan has now successfully offloaded over $110 million in bitcoin this year—proving even sovereigns can get the "sell the news" itch.

A peek at the immutable ledger shows Druk Holding's current diamond-handed stack is now just 4,453 BTC, worth around $330 million. That's a serious drawdown from their glory days in October 2024, when they were sitting on a throne of over 13,000 BTC.

The kingdom originally stacked its sats the hard way: by mining them. Bhutan used its abundant, cheap hydroelectric power to fuel its mining ops, accumulating its initial treasure organically—before this recent series of "take-profit" royal decrees.